Many companies take advantage of virtualization solutions to consolidate several specialized physical servers and workstations into fewer servers running virtual machines. Each virtual machine can be configured with its own set of virtual hardware (e.g., processor, memory, ports, and the like) such that specialized services that each of the previous physical machines performed can be run in their native operating system. In particular, a virtualization layer, or hypervisor, allocates the computing resources of one or more host servers into one or more virtual machines and further provides for isolation between such virtual machines. In such a manner, the virtual machine is a representation of a physical machine by software.
Virtualization solutions can be adapted to provide virtual desktop computing (VDC). In VDC systems, each virtual machine can represent a virtual desktop, which can be accessed remotely by a client machine. By providing virtual desktops, VDC systems can allow users to access their applications and data from any remote computing device. VDC systems also centralize and streamline desktop administration for IT administrators.
Terminal Services is a MICROSOFT WINDOWS component that provides benefits similar to the benefits of VDC systems. A machine running Terminal Services is a Terminal Server, which can act like a mainframe multi-user operating system. As such, the Terminal Server can allow multiple concurrent users to start a remote interactive Windows session. Like VDC systems, Terminal Servers centralize user application and data, allowing remote access and efficient IT administration.
Authentication to a virtual desktop or Terminal Server can be performed using single sign-on authentication. Single sign-on authentication is a technique that can reduce or eliminate credentials re-prompting each time a user accesses a computing resource, such as a virtual desktop, Terminal Server session, or application.